How to Redact a PDF (Permanently Remove Sensitive Info)

Before you share a contract, a bank statement, or a medical record, you often need to hide a few sensitive details. The wrong way is to draw a black box over the text in a viewer — the text is still there underneath and anyone can copy it. To truly redact a PDF, the hidden content has to be destroyed, not just covered.

Proper redaction removes the underlying data. A safe approach renders the page to an image with the selected areas painted solid black, so there is no text or object left to recover in those spots.

To redact a PDF with PdfWill: open the Redact tool, upload your file, and drag a box over anything you want to hide. Apply, and download the redacted file. Because it runs entirely in your browser, the document is never uploaded — which matters a lot when the whole point is privacy.

For documents you also want to lock down, the protect tool adds a password. And to add visible notes elsewhere on the page, the edit and annotate tool works alongside redaction.